Be Still.

Yesterday, I came across a poetry competition with a prompt that stopped me in my tracks:

“Write a poem about how you remember it”…

It felt like an invitation to unearth what I’ve tried so many times to bury. So I said yes. Not just to the competition, but to the process. The poem that emerged—How I Remember You—was more than just an entry. It was a reckoning.

As I began to write, the memories came like a tide. The grief, the betrayal, the silent rejections, the ache of being displaced—not just from a home, but from people I trusted. Especially him. A friend I once believed in. Someone I confided in, reached for, cried over. I remembered how deeply I wanted connection, and how often I was met with distance. I remembered reaching out countless times, hoping to be seen. Heard. Held. And I remembered silence. A silence that grew so loud, it echoed through years of my life.



I poured it all into the poem. The confusion. The heartbreak. The unanswered messages. The hunger—for food, for love, for a place to belong. How I Remember You captured the fragments of a painful chapter, the unraveling of a bond that perhaps only ever existed in my own heart.

But poetry, as cathartic as it is, isn’t where healing ends. That same day, after writing the poem, I went to God in prayer. I worshipped. I wept. I bared it all—every bruise, every secret bitterness I didn’t know I was still carrying.



And as I lay it down at the feet of the One who knows all things, I felt a shift. Not in my circumstances. Not even in the memory. But in my heart.



In the stillness after the storm, a song began to rise.

“Be Still” by Hillsong Worship.

It played not just in the room, but in my spirit. The lyrics washed over me:

Be still and know that the Lord is in control...

I won’t be afraid, You don’t let go...


As I listened, I remembered something he once said to me—the very friend who had hurt me.

I had been anxious. Spiraling.

And he said, “God said I should tell you: Be still.”

It startled me then. It comforts me now.

Because for a brief moment, I believed he had heard God. I believed he had cared.

And I choose to believe that somewhere, beneath the distance and detachment, he still does.

That God still speaks to him. That the Spirit of God still lives in him.



So today, I let go of the version of the story that clings to pain.

I choose instead to remember the version of you who loved God.

The one who once showed kindness, even if briefly.

The one who made my bed and ironed my clothes when I had nowhere else to go.



This is not forgetting.

This is forgiving.

And that is the stillness I carry now.

Let this post be the closing note to that poem, The Way I Remember You.

Let it be a bridge—between memory and mercy.

And if you’re reading this,

yes, you—

I still believe in the Spirit of God inside you.

And God still loves you.



So do I. From afar, in peace.

Be still.